The USD is on the downward trends, may reach unexpected low before June as petroleum marketers started lifting AGO (Diesel) from Dangote refinery earlier this week. PMS lifting to commence in May. This will further crash the USD.
The reason being that large percentage of the importers sourcing the USD are petroleum products importers, now that they pay in Naira for lifting from Dangote refinery, there will be less pressure on the USD and dollar will be more available to other importers who do not need as much dollars as petroleum products importers.
The CBN has also tightened the noose on the banks. Nobody can get the USD without actually needing it. You submit your three years tax certificates, international passport, visa, oversea’s vendor’s account number (in which the bank will help you pay as you will not be given any physical dollar), proforma and any other document as may be required by your bank.
Similarly, your bank will have to apply to the CBN portal on your behalf, and upon qualifying for the application, your bank will pay the said amount into your oversea’s vendor’s account. There is no room for hoarding of the USD which will in turn cause unnecessary artificial scarcity in the market.
As an importer sourcing dollars from the bank, you are only entitled to 20 percent of the total sum needed, and note that this will not be given to you in cash either. It will be paid into your dollar card which you can only spend outside the country when you travel abroad for your importation activities. You don’t have any business spending dollars in Nigeria.
The same thing goes for those who patronise the bereaux de change, before you can get the USD from the vendor, you must definitely need it outside the shore of Nigeria. There is no longer undocumented transactions. You have to submit your NIN and BNV.
If you are going to study abroad and you want to pay your school fees, you must submit a copy of your admission letter, school invoice and account number. Then the vendor will help you pay.
No undocumented dollar transactions, can be collected from a vendor, let alone hoarding it.
Just like an importer, you as a student are also entitled to 20 percent of the total amount. You may need some money outside the school fees, like accommodation, transportation and some other miscellanies.
Don’t forget , a vendor will not give you this 20 percent in cash, it will be paid into a designated facility designed by the CBN.
You may think you can buy your way and play the game but I doubt it, because no vendor will want to toy with his business. As a matter of fact, they all now register with 250k for one state operation and 500 million Naira deposit.
For a vendor that wants to operate nationwide, they are required to register with 500k and deposit 2 billion Naira. You heard me right, 2 billion Naira. And any infraction may make them lose their deposit.
No vendor will even favour you at the expense of his business because the CBN is now giving them 20,000 dollars per week to trade with and they will pay the Naira equivalent to the CBN.
Although, they have not reached the target, they can only get 10k USD for now, and as more dollars are available, they can get the 20k USD as promised.
I don’t think any dollar vendor will want to play any dirty game to lose this opportunity, because henceforth, they have to account for how the USD given to them the previous week was used with documents to back it up before they can qualify for another allocation.
And you think with all these strings attached, a vendor will want to favour you as a customer, while at a loss to his business? Not even a politician can make him play the ball. For your information, about 4,173 dollar vendors were recently deregistered, and their licenses withdrawn. We are only left with a manageable 1500 plus. Any uncomplied vendor will be deregistered with the speed of light.
For a long while, the month of March has been the only month the federal allocation would be shared without dollar going up. Instead, it nosedived. I trust our super corrupt governor’s before these policies, they would have converted their state allocations to dollars, weakened our Naira and strengthened the dollars.
Another shocker is that commercial banks cannot hoard dollars again. They are given a threshold to maintain and any excess should be sold to their customers.
This also includes the profits they make on the dollar transactions that used to be shared by the shareholders before now.
Any profit from the dollar transactions should be reinjected into their dollar business and when the threshold is reached, they should sell the spillovers.
Is God not wonderful? Our almighty banks, dollar Vendor and super governors are all caged with one stroke of policies. Nigeria is on the right track and we are going to get it right.
Mohammed Sulaimon Omotayo
wrote from Ilorin.
